Once again at the rear of the house, I sprang up on a tree that was about three meters away from the building with branches that were formed like steps, ideal for climbing. Moreover, its highest branch soared up over the roof. With a sense of balance as highly developed as ours, and by proceeding with special care, there wouldn't be any problem in reaching the top by a series of springs, and more important, in coming down again. There was, however, danger in the fact that the branches got thinner and thinner as the tree got younger and younger toward the top. The entire maneuver thus required the talent and agility of a trapeze artist.
After I had scrambled up the trunk and allowed myself a breather on a sturdy branch, I noticed another danger. The whole tree was coated with ice, and I had to be damned careful about how I moved if I didn't want to slide down and begin learning how to fly at this late stage in life.
Executing carefully calculated leaps while sending up fervent prayers to the Good Lord, who on the birthday of His Son might well be particularly receptive to such entreaties, I finally reached the branch at roof level. It was strong and long enough to carry my weight and serve as a bridge. The only problem was the disturbing way it swayed back and forth in the icy wind. Moreover, there was no turning back after embarking on the journey, because the branch was so slender that it permitted no elaborate maneuvers, let alone panicky flights of retreat. There was only one way: you had to summon up all your courage and, without looking down, balance yourself on the branch until you reached the roof. With no further thought of the consequences of this kamikaze feat, I proceeded to act …
My kind is not cursed, thank God, with the injustice of perspiration. Yet when my paws finally touched roof tile on the other side, I had the feeling that I, as far as this biological characteristic was concerned, was a mutation. I actually believed I could sense the stinking sweat of fear under my coat while I was gliding over the branch with quick steps, my eyes fixed rigidly on my goal as if I were hypnotized, and the branch springing joyfully up and down under my paws.
Finally, standing on the secure roof, I gasped a sigh a relief, and risked a downward glance over the eaves. Considering the yawning abyss below that could well have been a shot in a Hitchcock classic, I asked myself in all seriousness whether I didn't have a screw loose somewhere. Why did I risk my life for something that to all appearances would forever remain a gory riddle? What was I really out to prove to myself and to others by doing this? That I was the cleverest creature on God's earth? How vain! How ridiculous! And, as I had just demonstrated, how suicidal!
But the defect in my brain that was responsible for my always doing the opposite of what I had just recognized as ill-advised drove me on to new abominations. And so, within seconds the dizzying thrill faded away when I remembered why I had climbed up there to begin with.
I devoted my attention again to the roof, whose tiles, as I had expected, were damaged and mocked any kind of symmetrical order. The wind had flung them around wildly, and they only seemed to be waiting for the slightest reason to rain down on the street. But to my great joy I found a wide, multipaned studio skylight right in the middle of the roof, though it was coated with a thin layer of snow.
I rushed up to it and noticed that a transparent plastic sheet replaced one of the panes, which had been shattered. I scraped aside the snow from one of the undamaged panes with my front paws so that I could look down into the storage room through the opening I had thus created. Although the darkness hindered a full view, I was able to confirm Bluebeard's descriptions. The top floor, which had been converted in a hurry and rather carelessly into storage space, was crammed full with multilevel metal shelves and racks that held old goblets and decorative figures of ceramic and porcelain. For the most part, these decorative figures really were modeled after Felidae and probably intended for a consumer group having the same extravagant tastes as Gustav. I could well imagine my senseless life companion spying such a porcelain animal in a store window, running in, buying it for an outrageous price, then putting it on the fireplace mantel and calling my attention to its similarity to me in his annoying baby talk, ad nauseam. Yet, just as Bluebeard had raved, there were also life-size versions of the more powerful of my kind. The eerie gallery of lacquered tigers, jaguars, pumas, and leopards gave me the creeps, because if they had been mass-produced somewhere in Asia, their makers had gone to considerable lengths to make them as lifelike as possible.
Since the peephole I had pawed open in the snow did not allow me to see much, I proceeded to widen it. Then I went to the other window and bit by bit brushed aside the snow covering it as well. The dungeonlike room gradually filled with the wan light of the grim Christmas sky and slowly revealed its mysteries. It took a long time before I had scanned every detail of the chaos in there. My frustration became unbearable, because nothing looked like what I was so frantically searching for.
Then, just as I was thinking of giving up, suddenly I noticed it with a shock …
In fact, he did look as if he were still alive. Jammed between two porcelain brothers as snow white as he, and shielded from prying eyes by
